Baby Fae heart transplantation
Baby Fae heart transplantation refers to the pioneering yet controversial procedure performed on an infant named Baby Fae, who was born in 1984 with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a serious congenital heart defect. Faced with a lethal condition and no established treatment options, Baby Fae's case garnered significant media attention when Dr. Leonard Bailey's team at Loma Linda University Medical Center proposed an unprecedented approach: transplanting the heart of a baboon. The surgery took place on October 26, 1984, marking the first time a newborn received an animal heart.
Despite initial optimism, Baby Fae's body rejected the baboon heart, and she passed away twenty days post-transplant. The case sparked intense debate on multiple fronts, including the ethics of using animal organs in humans, the adequacy of parental consent, and the potential risks and benefits of such experimental procedures. Supporters argued that successful xenotransplantation could help address the shortage of human organs, while critics raised concerns about animal rights and the ethical implications of such surgery on a vulnerable infant. Ultimately, Baby Fae's case led to increased regulation of xenotransplantation research and did not pave the way for widespread acceptance of animal-to-human organ transplantation.
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Baby Fae heart transplantation
The Event The first cross-species heart transplant into a human infant
Date October 26, 1984
Place California
A group of physicians at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Southern California, performed the world’s first animal-to-human transplant in a newborn, when they placed a baboon’s heart into the chest of a twelve-day-old infant named Baby Fae. This highly experimental procedure, which ultimately failed, opened a Pandora’s box of ethical, moral, scientific, and legal issues.
It became clear that all was not well with Baby Fae shortly after her birth. The small infant, born in Barstow, California, on October 14, 1984, had hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a lethal birth defect in which the heart’s underdeveloped left ventricle cannot supply the body with sufficient blood flow. There was no well-established, successful treatment for her malformed heart, so the infant went home with her mother to die. A few days later, Doctor Leonard Bailey’s team at Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC) offered to replace the baby’s heart with the heart of a baboon in a procedure never before attempted in a newborn infant. Baby Fae received the heart of a young female baboon on October 26 and died twenty days later, on November 15. Her body had rejected the animal’s heart.
Impact
The news media closely followed the baby’s initial progress and ultimate decline. Days after the transplant, images of a yawning, stretching baby could be seen on the evening news. Flowers, get-well cards, and donations poured into the hospital. Criticism and praise were abundant from both the lay and the scientific press. Those in support of the surgery pointed out that the successful use of animal organs would alleviate the shortage of human organs. Scientists were quick to respond that there was no indication that cross-species transplants would succeed. Animal-rights activists were troubled by the sacrifice of a healthy animal. Legal scholars objected to the use of a minor in such a highly experimental procedure. The consent obtained from Baby Fae’s parents came under scrutiny by the National Institutes of Health, which concluded that the LLUMC physicians were overly optimistic in regard to the baby’s long-term chances of survival and had failed to discuss the possible use of a human heart to save her. Ethicists condemned the xenotransplantation, because they felt that the procedure was not in the baby’s best interests: Palliative surgery that had recently been developed by William Norwood would have given the baby a 40 percent chance of survival. Animal-to-human organ transplantation did not become an accepted medical practice after the Baby Fae case, and even research related to such transplantation became heavily regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Bibliography
Bailey, Leonard, et al. “Baboon-to-Human Cardiac Xenotransplantation in a Neonate.” The Journal of the American Medical Association 254, no. 23 (December, 1985): 3321–3329.
Sharp, Lesley. “Human, Monkey, Machine.” In Bodies, Commodities, and Biotechnologies: Death, Mourning, and Scientific Desire in the Realm of Human Organ Transfer, edited by Sharp. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.